Many metal forming processes involve steps of heating a workpiece and applying a shaping force to it for the purpose of altering or maintaining a desired shape profile. Temperature control is generally quite important in such processes for the purpose of attaining or maintaining a desired metallurgical state and/or carrying out heat treatment steps such as nitriding, carburizing and the like. Resistance heating, wherein an electrical current is flowed through the workpiece so as to generate heat, is preferred in a number of metal forming processes since resistance heating is very quick and very controllable so that precise temperatures may be achieved and/or selected regions of a workpiece heated.
The prior art has implemented a number of metal forming processes in which resistance heating is combined with various shaping steps such as bending, die forming, stretching and the like. Some such systems are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,737,954; 6,463,779; 6,384,388; 5,515,705; 3,933,020; 6,868,709; and 5,744,773.
In various metal working processes, it is necessary to contact a workpiece with a liquid or gaseous fluid during the course of a forming and treatment process. This fluid may comprise a quench fluid used to control the temperature of the workpiece, or it may comprise a treatment fluid such as a species which is chemically reactive with the metal of a workpiece; such treatment fluids may comprise nitriding fluids, carburizing fluids, and the like.
The present invention is directed to a system which integrates heating, shaping, and fluid delivery functions into a single workpiece supporting station. The system of the present invention may be fabricated in modular form, and is amenable to being quickly reconfigured so as to allow for the manufacture of a variety of articles having different profiles and/or different metallurgical properties. As such, the system of the present invention is readily adaptable to high volume manufacturing processes. These and other advantages of the present invention will be explained with reference to the drawings, discussion and description hereinbelow.